


Bad Things Happen Bingo Prompt Fill

by zeesqueere



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Child Death, Gen, Identity Angst, Internalized fantasy racism, Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome, attempted murder of a child, enmeshed familial relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-01-16 13:52:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18522859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeesqueere/pseuds/zeesqueere
Summary: A collection of prompt-fill fics for the #BadThingsHappenBingo card challenge on Tumblr featuring my original Dragon Age characters.





	1. Purest Expression of Grief

**Author's Note:**

  * For [captain_othersider](https://archiveofourown.org/users/captain_othersider/gifts), [juno60](https://archiveofourown.org/users/juno60/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Square: Lost Their Voice from Screaming  
> Requested by @captain-othersider on Tumblr

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All that I've been taught  
> And every word I've got  
> Is foreign to me  
> —“Foreigner’s God,” Hozier

He was three years old.

 

 

His first memory, blurred and hazy from the weight of recollection, like sifting through the dark abyss of an abandoned well from on high, still stings through the separation of distance and time even now. He was so young then, so small. So scared.

  
His sister’s voice pierced through the air, coming in waves that grew faster and more frantic with each breath. She had returned to the family’s estate in the middle of the night and had been screaming ever since.

  
Broken screams, broken dreams. There would be no sleep for Errol that night. His mother turned on her cot and reached out to him in her dream. Even her embrace could not block out the sound.

  
Suddenly, one scream broke into two before both faded out entirely. Laughter drifted out of the main house to reach his young years in its place. Only a few days later would he learn he had another nephew.

 

 

* * *

He was six years old.

 

“Let me go,” Lisenea screamed, clawing at the arms holding her back from Errol. “You cannot take him from me,” she cried out, voice hoarse and wavering from the force of her sobs, “He is my son... My everything!”

 

The men continued to hold steady as she writhed and cursed in Elven at the top of her lungs, fighting to reach her son: “I will not let you take him from me!”

  
The grip on Errol’s shoulders tightened, fingers digging bruises into young skin as the boy instinctively leaned forward towards her.

 

“You are his mother, but he is my son,” Reginald’s voice cut through the air with a chill.

  
Lisenea sagged from his words, the fight leaving her petite frame. The arms around her were no longer holding her back—they were now all that was keeping her from falling into the mud.

“Mine,” she continued to mouth hopelessly, her voice utterly spent.

  
“Mamae!” Errol cried out, straining to free himself from his father’s vice-like grip.

  
“Then take him.”

 

A shove pushed Errol away from his father as Reginald began to turn away.

 

“You are both mine to handle how I please. Don’t forget.”

 

He motioned for his attendants follow him back into the main house: “Your borrowed time is to be repaid with interest, Lisenea. Mark my words.”

  
She crawled through the dirt, reaching out desperately for Errol’s body. He lifted himself up enough to wiggle into her embrace. Mother and child clung to each other and continued to cry.

 

 

* * *

He was twelve years old.

 

The sickroom was full of spindleweed smoke, cloying and stifling, threatening to fill up all the empty spaces inside of Errol. He coughed despite himself.

  
Justin cracked an eye open and peered up as his half-brother: “You’re here again?”

  
“I’m still here,” Errol corrected. “Your mother asked me to watch after you.”

  
Justin yawned and rolled onto his side to face him: “You’re always in here coughing and fidgeting. How am I supposed to get better?” he laughed liquidly before dissolving into a coughing fit of his own.

  
Errol jumped up to pat his back in an attempt to force his body to right itself again. He felt Justin’s breathing slowly calm, the rise and fall of his feverish body growing smoother and shallower under his palm. A shuddering exhale began in his throat but never quite finished. Errol struggled to make out an answering inhale.

  
“...Justin?”

 

 

* * *

He was seventeen years old.

 

“Mae? Are you there?” Errol called out as he approached their room in the servant’s quarters. Too excited to wait for a response, Errol flung open the door and burst inside.

 

“I’m going to Kirkwall! I’m really going to—” he stopped mid-sentence. “...What are you doing?”

  
Lisenea spared him a thin smile as she glanced up at her son before resuming her chopping: “I’m preparing you some tea,” she replied, “so you can toast your news. It’s too early in the day for any spirits.”

  
“But mamae,” shouted Errol, pointing at her cutting board, “that’s deathroot!”

 

He tried to grab the knife but she stopped him, placing her other hand on his wrist.

  
“Tal’irlahna, esha’len. Lasan felandin ghilan’na din’an him,” Lisenea replied matter-of-factly.

  
Errol’s blood froze in his veins.

  
“I had to stock up again so that there would be enough to concentrate,” she continued. “Your body doesn’t respond to lower doses the way it used to, so I’ve had to work extra hard to get it strong enough this time.”

  
He fell down onto his knees in shock.

 

“You said... ‘used to?’ You’ve poisoned me before? You’ve been poisoning me?”

 

The air was thick from the steam rising from her kettle and Errol felt himself growing faint.

  
“I can’t let you leave my side. Who do I have in this world if I don’t have you?”

  
What horrified him most was the serene expression on his mother’s face.

  
“We’ve always been together, you and I. It’s not right for a young boy to leave his mamae.”

  
No words could come to him; not in Elven, not in Common, not even any of the Orlesian curses he’d picked up from his eldest half-sister. Words wouldn’t form off his tongue—so he unleashed a scream that captured his breaking heart more eloquently than any words found among all the languages of Thedas.

 

 

* * *

He was twenty-seven years old.

 

Errol wandered into Skyhold’s chapel and sank to his knees at the altar. Andraste’s face seemed to mock him, the statue’s upturned lips resembling a sneer from where he knelt. He had seen the red lyrium monstrosity that Kirkwall’s former Knight-Commander had become when he’d last passed through the citystate. Meredith Stannard’s crown had been modeled after the one Andraste always wore in her iconography; now, however, that pulsing blood-red stone was all he could see whenever he saw depictions of the Maker’s Bride.

  
His mind circled back to blood. The raven had arrived in the early morning, Leliana had said; she’d been the one that broke him the news that his mother—his mamae—had died. The sanitarium reported that she had been in a great deal of pain prior to her passing, that she had been coughing up blood for weeks. The writer had closed the missive by saying that that the Maker’s mercy had finally eased her suffering on the long journey back to His side. Errol had stormed out of the rookery then without allowing Leliana another word.

  
‘Maker’s mercy’ his ass. Lisenea may have encouraged him to attend Chantry services as a child, but she never went herself; that was the one activity she wouldn’t do with him no matter how he would cry. She told him that it would help his father love him more, but he still remembered the smile his mae wore when he told her he wouldn’t go anymore. Sometimes he caught her praying to the Creators when she thought Errol was asleep. He would hold his eyes slightly open as he tried to read the divine pleas off her lips; if he could just make sense of the Elven, he could find a way to be a better son.

  
Those memories burned now. A decade later and Errol still hadn’t quite decided how he felt about his mae. Every cherished moment from his youth was tainted. Her powerlessness, her fear, her paranoia; Errol couldn’t bring himself to blame her for succumbing to madness and grief under the yoke of all life had forced upon her. Neither could he excuse her, however, for choosing to selfishly cling to a fantasy rather than letting him find happiness in his own life.

  
He had spent the last ten years trying to forget, yet all his efforts had been for naught. A single letter, as brief as it was contemptible, had upturned his entire world. He was now a man without a mother.

  
Andraste’s smiling face continued to stare blankly over Errol’s head, oblivious to his anguish. The Chant taught that the Maker has turned away from the world once. Andraste died on the pyre nearly a thousand years ago and Errol figured that any god that now had his earthly bride by his side would probably forget the world once again.

  
Damn the Chantry’s Maker and their bland Andrastes. Damn the Mothers and Sisters that had let his elf mother die in prolonged agony. Damn his father, devout in worshipping the Maker’s Bride even as he cast all women as whores. Damn his father for leaving his mother broken and beaten down. Damn his father for using him to control his mae. Damn his father. Damn!

  
Errol found himself cursing out loud, louder and louder, tears streaming down his cheeks. He shoved all of the votive candles off the altar and leaned forward to lay his head on the marble feet of Andraste. His screams went unmuffled, his prayers unanswered, his threats unheeded. Andraste’s face remained impassive. The Maker remained absent. Errol remained utterly alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lisenea’s sentence in Elvhen is supposed to translate to something like: “Don’t scream, my child. I’m giving you this deathroot to guide you into becoming dead.” Since Elvhen is a cipher and not a true conlang, it’s difficult to construct viable sentences—please bear with my attempt.


	2. Let Me Forget

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Square: Fevers  
> Requested by @captain-othersider on Tumblr

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Try, try your whole life  
> To be righteous and be good  
> Wind up on your own floor  
> Choking on blood  
> —“Sept. 15th 1983,” The Mountain Goats

A snapping sound startled Eshal awake. The frogs outside his tent had quieted suddenly, some seemingly silencing themselves mid-croak. Even the crickets had ceased chirping.

 

The marsh here was the only open water within a two day’s journey in any direction and often attracted things that prowled its banks, whether on four legs or two. Perhaps it was a hungry spider bigger than his head? A feral, child-eating, nocturnal vampire goose? Or maybe even a hyena escaped from an eccentric Orlesian noble’s exotic animal menagerie? His young mind spun with possibilities.

 

Eshal also vaguely recalled Madame Zeina telling one of the acrobat twins that raiders, bandits, or highwaymen—all somehow different from each other, but equally deadly—were also likely to rely on the water here, since any band more than three strong was bound to have someone with enough ability to turn it potable. She had urged that they move on; a plea that was overwhelmingly overruled by the other adults.

 

His mentor Robin Blind had cautioned him against wandering about after sundown, so naturally Eshal felt compelled to investigate. The safety of the camp was at stake, he reasoned to himself. Surely it was his obligation to make sure they were all safe—nevermind that someone else was on watch or that he was barely twelve; something had to be done.

 

Both moons were new and the stars were hiding behind fans of cloud, casting the world below into utter blackness. Only a faint glow from the central firepit allowed Eshal to creep beyond the edge of camp and into the waiting marsh before darkness swallowed him.

 

He kept his arms splayed and steps small as he inched deeper and deeper into the night, unsure of where he was going but driven onwards regardless. The silence continued to press in all around him as he worked his way through the sedges, straining to hear any signs of wildlife. Curiosity winning over caution, he began taking larger and larger strides, delighting in the schelch of clay between his toes and the cool marshwater along his ankles. Soon, he found himself running through the marsh, purpose abandoned; he felt freer than he had in his entire short life and felt a burning need to keep running until he fell off the edge of the world.

 

Before he knew what was happening, he was falling. He thrashed around, but between the panic and the darkness and the burning behind his eyelids, he had no sense of direction or distance. Was he still falling? Was he pushing himself to the surface or further underwater? He had never learned to swim. He had never been in anything deeper than a wash basin and now he was going to drown. He struggled to breathe, only to choke on the water that filled his lungs. His arms were growing heavy. He was sinking, sinking…

 

Standing? He was utterly cold as he felt the night air blowing past him. He spluttered as he sank to his knees in the mud and coughed up all the water he’d swallowed. He stayed kneeling until he was finally empty again.

 

“On your feet, imekari,” a voice barked behind him.

 

Tears still stinging his eyes, Eshal turned his head to see the outline of a hulking man. The stranger shifted and offered him a hand up. His palm was rough and calloused as it closed around Eshal’s forearm, but his grasp was gentle.

 

Eshal coughed his thanks as he searched the darkness for the man’s face.

 

”Are you a giant?”

 

The man stood silent as though weighing the question. After a moment, he allowed: “a giant among men, perhaps, but I am not of the Giantfolk.”

 

“Are you going to eat me?” he asked then.

 

“I have made no habit of eating Tal-Vashoth, and I don’t intend to start with one so small.”

 

“Never been called ‘small’ before,” Eshal said with a shrug, “and everyone thinks I’m a giant, too.”

 

The stranger stayed silent at that; if his face displayed any reaction, Eshal had no way of telling.

 

The sky began to lighten into the gray of false dawn. Eshal shivered. The air felt like it was made of heated iron, burning with every inhale as it filled his lungs. He coughed again. The stranger leaned down and gave him a thump on his back, dislodging something unpleasant from inside of him. Once he finished, Eshal noticed that his rescuer had skin that blended into the early morning sky and a set of horns that curled around pointed ears.

 

“You’re like me!” he exclaimed before doubling over and coughing once more.

 

“We are of a kind,” the stranger assented, “but you are not Qunari.”

 

“Then why is that what everyone calls me? At least, that’s what I’m called when they don’t care to say worse things. ‘Qunari’ this, ‘Qunari’ that. What does it mean? Why do they think I am and you think I’m not a whatever-it-means?”

 

The man—the Qunari, the stranger that looked like Eshal’s reflection yet claimed they weren’t the same—simply frowned to himself.

 

Changing the subject, he placed his calloused palm against Eshal’s forehead: “Imekari-bas has a fever. I will give you something to eat that will help.”

 

He reached into a pocket and handed Eshal a few wilted elfroot stems.

 

“Chew. Regain your strength. Go home.”

 

“Estevan!” a voice shouted.

 

“Get away from him,” yelled another.

 

Eshal turned to see several adults from the circus running towards them.

 

Rob drew one of his throwing knives and held it up, threatening, “I swear on Andraste’s tits, you don’t back off an’ you’ll be meeting the sharp end of this here.”

 

“Wait, stop!” cried Eshal, stepping forward protectively. “He saved me!”

 

“Kidnapped you, more like,” one of the acrobat twins hissed, “from right outta your tent in the night.”

 

“Qun-following scum!” the other spat. “Converting children is low, even for oxmen.”

 

Eshal burst out crying and the Qunari put a comforting hand on his shoulder, prompting the twins to scream further curses at him. He stood still and proud as he glared back in silence.

 

Fajraz fought to escape Madame Zeina’s grasp without success, kicking and screaming as she tried to reach her sworn brother: “Maker above, let me go!”

 

She bit into Zeina’s forearm and broke her hold long enough to run a few steps before she was grabbed again.

 

“It’s dangerous,” Zeina warned.

 

“Es!” Fajraz called out, “look out!”

 

Eshal watched with rapidly-mounting dread as Rob wound his arm back and released his hold on his knife. Everything seemed to slow to a crawl, time stretching then snapping with the sound of the impact.

 

A gurgle escaped the man behind him. Warmth from under the Qunari’s skin geysered out of his neck. He stayed standing a few moments longer, a look of terror and rage crossing his features as his eyes caught Eshal’s before he finally fell. He did not get back up.

 

Eshal stood trembling like a leaf as he watched the life drain from his savior. Rays from the rising sun caught the pool of crimson clouding the water and scattered a thousand bloodstained reflections across the marsh. The ground was red. The clouds were red. The Qunari stared accusingly into the morning air with a face that could have belonged to his father, a face hauntingly alike his own but for age and circumstance. Horns dug into the clay, hand still outstretched and open, simple armor stained with yet one more man’s blood. That same blood was running off Eshal in sweaty droplets; matting into the curls of his hair; catching in the grooves of his horns, where he’d find it days from now no matter how he scrubbed; and staining his grey skin as red as the sun still rising behind him.

 

“You are not Qunari,” the man had said mere minutes before—a lifetime ago.

 

Eshal raised his hands to his face. Same blood, same skin, same horns… Same fate? To be Qunari: did it mean to be hated, to be slaughtered like an animal at the slightest offense? Where lay the difference between them? Was he un-Qunari enough to be safe?

 

Robin had told him to papier-mâché over his horns so they would look fake and had given him a good human name. That same man—the closest thing he had to a parent, to a father—had just killed someone that looked just like him. Was Eshal a Qunari to him too?

 

One of the twins walked up and placed hir hand on his shoulder, smiling gently: “let’s get you back to camp, Es. You’re safe now.”

 

It was all Eshal could do to resist flinching at Salathiel’s touch as something unspeakable burned within him.


	3. Deliver Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Square: Knife to the Throat  
> Requested by Liv @juno60 (@juno-60 on Tumblr)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> House burnt down, burnt down to the fucking ground  
> I don't even care now if I make it out  
> Can't get out my head, it's the atmosphere  
> —“Make It Out Alive,” NAO Feat. SiR

A clap of thunder sent the leaded glass windows rattling in their frames. The rains had arrived late enough this year that the water was pooling above the dead underbrush rather than penetrating into the earth. Flooding had become a serious consideration in the region, rapidly overtaking the fire warnings sent out from Perendale mere days ago. Diaraye recalled overhearing Papa complaining that western Nevarra had become a tinderbox awaiting a match, but the storms that followed that pronouncement had quickly shifted the family’s concerns.

  
Her parents and brothers had left before dawn to survey the part of the family compound that lay down in the valley, leaving Dia to tend to her youngest sister all by herself. Djibril’s wife Aïssatou was bedridden with a serious cold and Maman had gone with him to watch over her daughter-in-law. Daouda’s house, meanwhile, was in a gully at the bottom of the valley and would be the first to collapse if the weather kept up; Papa had agreed to help him shore up the house’s defenses and pack up his remaining valuables. Dia had stood at the threshold, as tall as her prepubescent dwarven body allowed, and sworn to safeguard the main house until her parents’ return.

  
It had been two days. Another peal of rolling thunder boomed directly overhead. Djéné woke up and started wailing along to the rumbles as the lightning strike faded away.

  
Dia sighed. “That was quieter than the last one,” she grumbled to herself.

  
“Scary!” her sister shrieked.

  
Dia picked Djéné up from out of the crib. It had been hers once, although Maman had been too anxious to sleep apart from her firstborn. Truthfully, Djéné was getting too big for it, but she threw tantrums every time Dia tried to get her to sleep anywhere else. “There’s nothing to be scared of, you big baby,” said Dia, swatting at Djéné’s hands to keep them out of her hair. “The rain is outside and we are inside. Safe and sound and not scared, right?”

  
“It’s still there,” Djéné said with all the severity her not-yet-three years afforded her. “I hate rain.”

  
Dia rolled her eyes: “Well, it’s a good thing that the weather doesn’t care what you think, then, no?”

  
“Why don’t you care?” asked the toddler.  
The sober tone of her question gave Dia pause, the pounding rain punctuating the temporary lull.

  
“I _do_ care about you,” she replied slowly, setting Djéné on the floor, “but there’s nothing I can do about the weather.”

  
“Meanie.”

  
Dia knelt down to meet her sister at eye-level and repeated one of the messages all Cadash children learned by heart: “‘I can no sooner gain control over the skies than I can fly through them; the only control that matters is that which I hold over myself, my clients, my competitors, and my enemies.’”

  
Djéné scrunched her nose at the singsong recitation: “Boring!”

  
“Would supper be less boring?” Dia asked, raising herself back onto her feet.

  
“Make me mafé de poulet,” Djéné insisted. “Mafé, mafé, mafé!”

  
“I’ve already made—”

  
“Mafé!”

  
“You’re impossible,” groaned Dia.

  
Djéné skipped a few paces and spun to stick her tongue out at her older sister before heading for the kitchen table. She then clambered up onto the bench and began beating the tabletop with her tiny fists as she resumed her chant.

  
“Alright, alright!” Dia grumbled, “I’ll make Her Highness Djénébou mafé...”

  
Djéné’s cheers made Dia smile despite herself as she bent to reach the cauldron of fôyô ni chê cooling on the hearth.

  
“...Tomorrow.”

  
She pushed herself up onto her tiptoes and pulled the ladle down from the wall.

  
“I’ve already made you perfectly a good supper,” Dia said while scooping the stew into her sister’s bowl, “so eat this now and I will get the chicken ready for tomorrow’s lunch.”

  
“I don’t want fôyô!” Djéné screamed, “I want Ma Aïssa’s mafé!”

  
“And you’ll get it tomorrow if you behave,” Dia responded while setting out a bowl of fonio.

  
“No! Now!”

  
The window above the table rattled as another lightning strike hit a nearby tree. The following thunderclap hung in the charged air above their heads like a great cat waiting to pounce.

  
Djéné let out another howling wail before descending into loud sobs.

  
“You keep that up and I will cook our last chicken into yassa instead,” Dia threatened.

  
Djéné tilted her head back and bawled even harder. The next roll of thunder could be barely heard over her high-pitched crying.

  
“Shut up,” Dia hissed, teeth clenched out of irritation, “or I’ll give you something to shut you up.”

 

Maman loved using that phrase, although Dia’s wasn’t entirely sure what her mother’s threat really meant; she’d never dared to risk finding out. The threat that’d always worked on Dia seemed to have had no effect on her sister, however, and she wasn’t sure how to improvise her next move.

  
“I want Ma Aïssa,” yelled Djéné. “I want Ma Aïssa and I! Want! Mafé!”

  
Dia scrubbed at her face in frustration. Just this morning at breakfast, Djéné had begged and pleaded for her to make fôyô ni chê. Dia had hunted high and low throughout the house for several hours before she had uncovered maman’s recipe box, then had gone out in the torrential rain to the courtyard coop and grabbed their family’s oldest chicken to slaughter. She had worked tirelessly to prepare tonight’s meal in the hopes that Djéné would eat it happily; instead, her efforts were more than wasted.

  
She picked up the bowl of uneaten food in front of her sister and poured it back into the cauldron, then covered it back up to keep warm on the hearth, fighting to keep her voice from rising: “You won’t eat fôyô? Fine.”

 

The fonio grains were similarly scooped back into a pot and set aside.

 

“You’ll have to sleep on an empty stomach tonight, then.”

  
She pulled Djéné off the bench and walked her down the hall to the family’s sleeping mat.

 

”And to make sure that you learn your lesson, we’re going to sleep down here tonight. You’re too big for that cradle, anyway.”

  
Djéné crossed her tiny arms and pouted to full effect, but Dia was too tired for her sister’s indignation to register fully. She simply pulled Djéné into an embrace and curled up on the mat. The steady rainfall soon lulled them both to sleep.

 

 

* * *

A crack of thunder burst through the air at the same time as a brilliant flash of white flooded through the window of the bedroom. A crumbling, falling noise followed. Dia gasped awake, mind still thick with sleep-smog. The air was thick and hot and grey.

 

Fighting through her thoughts, she realized: the house was on fire.

  
Djéné wasn’t on the mat by her side or anywhere else in the back room. Dia’s head spun with mounting panic. Just as she was beginning to lose her head entirely, Dia heard the sound of Djéné whimpering. It seemed to be coming from the front room.

  
Dia pushed her way out of the bedroom, uncaring that the door handle burned her hand or that the ceiling was collapsing. Everything stung. Dia’s eyes began watering until all she could see were angry swirls of light. The air was too thick with smoke to call out so she lifted the hem of her sleepshirt to her mouth and tried to filter out the worst of the smoke through the thin fabric before trying again.

  
Hot splatters of cooking oil flew about and coated everything in their reach with a film of stinging, sizzling bursts of pain. She tried scooping water out of the basin only to find it had already evaporated. Similarly, their emergency water bucket was dry and crackling.

  
“Ma Dia,” Djéné croaked out from an arm’s length away.

  
Their biggest mortar must have landed on top of her after she’d tried pulling it down from the counter; Dia could smell the partially-crushed peanuts roasting against her sister’s exposed legs. She bent down and tried to free Djéné from the debris crushing her ribcage, pausing only to wipe away tears that obstructed her vision.

  
“I’m going to get us out,” she rasped.

  
Djéné nodded. Her eyes were scrunched closed from the pain and smoke and shame pressing in from all sides.

  
“Mafé,” Djéné managed between shallow breaths.

  
“I know.”

  
Djéné’s right leg had borne the brunt of the impact from the falling mortar and its pestle while her upper half had been pinned under a fallen ceiling beam.

  
Dia lifted her sister in her arms and forced herself to stand.

 

“I’m sorry,” she murmured against Djéné’s hairline, “and I promise to make you whatever you want tomorrow.”

  
Keeping herself hunched while maintaining a firm grip on the toddler shuddering in her arms, Dia picked her way through the room until she reached the front door. A halfhearted kick was enough to topple the splintering boards and clear them a way out.

  
“Stay with me,” Dia commanded as she crossed the smoldering threshold.

  
Djéné’s breath continued to stutter in her chest as she nodded weakly.

  
Dia walked to the other side of the clearing around their house and turned back to watch their home burning. The lightning strike had instantly charred the entire roof. The fire continued to rage despite the rain and waterlogged timber. Skyfire and cooking oil were a catastrophic cocktail, Dia thought to herself. She could feel Djéné’s lungs still struggling to drink in enough air, but at least the slick of hard rain had extinguished the places where their clothes had caught on fire.

  
Light from pitch-dipped torches broke over the curve of the valley as papa and Daouda climbed up the hills as fast as they dared. Their wavering glow allowed Dia to see the oil burns puckering angrily across her sister’s small body.

  
“I was bad,” Djéné choked out. “I wanted mafé. You said no and I didn’t listen.”

  
Dia hushed her sister and clutched her tighter to her chest: “You had me so scared, Djéné. Promise me you won’t try to cook alone again?”

  
Meanwhile, Papa took one look at the burning house and dropped his torch before falling to his knees. He punched at the ground, sending up great splashes of rainwater that went ignored in favor of wordlessly crying out with all his strength.

  
Daouda noticed Dia standing under the relative cover of the tree canopy and approached with cold fury burning in his eyes: “Diaraye, what by the Stone have you done?”

  
“The—”

  
“Excuses are pitiful, even for twerps like you,” he snarled. Daouda grabbed Djéné out of Dia’s grasp to inspect her for himself.

  
“She—”

  
“Shut up!”

  
Dia but her lip and forced back the tears threatening to well up.

  
The moment Daouda tore Djéné from Dia’s grasp, both of them could instantly tell something was wrong. Her head fell limply from her neck and her eyes looked up blankly. Her tiny chest had stopped rising and falling completely.

  
“Djénébou? It’s not funny,” he panicked. “Stop scaring me, wake up!”

  
“No…” Dia said distantly. She shook her head slowly and blinked. “She’s not. She’s just… Djéné’s just tired, right?”

  
But Dia knew she was lying even as the words left her mouth. She’d seen death up close and personal before, had even had to deal it at her first Carta proving on her 10th birthday. She remembered the way the man had crumpled with his final breath; seeing it enacted again by her baby sister broke something within her.

  
Daouda sobbed as he clung to Djéné’s body. Dia reached out tentatively towards her eldest brother and was shrugged off.

  
“This is all your fault,” he hissed.

  
She stepped back as if stung: “My fault?”

  
Daouda crouched to set Djéné’s body down against the roots of a nearby tree and sprung at Dia’s throat. The momentum sent her backwards to land in the water-choked grass. He started squeezing more and more violently while Dia lashed out with everything she could. A well-placed kick threw him enough for her to break his hold and crawl away as fast as her shaking arms could carry her.

  
“No you fucking don’t,” he called out as he pulled a dagger from his boot.

  
Distantly, Dia recalled that she had gifted him that pair of boots last Satinalia. The thought was cut short as he pulled her up by the hair and held the blade against her throat.

  
“You’re going to pay, Diaraye. I’m going to avenge my baby sister with your worthless little life. No one will mourn you after I tell them what you did and what I had to do. What I have to do.”

  
The tip of the dagger bit into her flesh. She felt herself retreating from her body in shock as beads of blood welled up from the growing cut. All that her mind would let her focus on were the teartracks across his cheeks and the way they glowed golden in with the flames of the main house still burning behind him.

  
_I’m going to die_ , she realized. _I’m going to die and find out if that Chanter in town is right; maybe I’ll meet his Maker. Maybe I’ll see Djéné again. Maybe she’ll forgive me_.

  
Dia felt rather than heard Papa’s voice rumbling through the air above her: “Enough!”

  
Douda pushed her head further into the earth and looked back towards their father.

  
“She’s not worth it.”

  
All the fight went out of her at that pronouncement. The grit and floodwater entering her mouth mixed with blood and a rising tide of bile. Dia found herself choking.

 

She felt like laughing but all that escaped her was a gurgle. Everything about tonight had been ridiculous enough to be one of the dreams that humans discussed so much. Maybe she was a changeling, after all, as Daouda had always implied: some nefarious child left in exchange for a parent’s true newborn. Maybe this was her dreaming up a punishment suitable for the crime of her existence.

  
Papa’s words seemed to effect Daouda too. With a final muttered curse, he pulled his knife away and wiped it against the back of her sleepshirt before returning it to his boot-sheath.

  
“Then I have one final brotherly warning to grant you,” he spat. “You’d do well to remember that ‘the only control that matters is that which I hold over myself, my clients, my competitors,’” he quoted, “‘and my enemies.’ I’ll give you a head start, for maman’s sake, but I _will_ track you down and finish what I’ve started tonight—no matter how long it takes. I will never let this go.”

  
Dia pushed herself up from the ground and pressed a muddy hand to her neck with what little force she could muster. The blood loss and remaining shock had her floating outside herself ten feet up.

  
“Watch just who you’re threatening,” she spoke against the flashing backdrop of another lightning strike. Her voice was thick with blood but she would not let that stop her: “If you so much as come within a hundred paces of me, just know that I will defend myself to the death—and it’ll be your death. Your handler won’t even send you out on assignment, and you think it makes sense to swear a blood oath against a twelve year-old? Go suck on gurgut farts, Daouda.”

  
“You—!” He swung his arm back with a right hook at the ready.

  
“Enough!” Papa bellowed as he restrained his eldest. “She’s already dead to us; our vengeance is had. Do not let these trees grow further accustomed to dwarf blood or they will come for the rest of this family before our time.”

  
Papa then guided Daouda back towards the house to begin salvaging what they could.

  
Dia collapsed back into the mud as the last of her strength failed her. Grief, relief, disbelief… She watched the flow of her own blood slipping past her weakening fingers to land on the roots of the nearest tree. She needed to get up, to leave, to get away again, to leave, to leave, to leave and never come back. She needed to leave but she couldn’t even move. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t think. All that remained was the vision of leaf-barren branches against an angry sky and the sensation of slipping further and further from herself.

  
“Diaraye,” a voice called out. “Diaraye, what are you— Oh! Oh, there’s so much blood… Sister, are you still with us?”

  
Djibril’s face replaced the trees. He had found the cut along her neck and the pressure and warmth of his hands brought tears to her eyes once more.

  
“Have you come to kill me too?”

  
“Have I…? No, no I have not,” Djibril replied gently as he began to scoop her into his arms. “I’m here to save you.”


End file.
